Fruition of Erised
by Fensta
Summary: OneShot. Harry and Ginny meet mere hours after the conclusion of the Battle. A bit serious, a bit fluffy, but what I think might have happened.


A deleted scene from directly after the chapter: "_The Flaw In The Plan_".

_Summary:_ Harry and Ginny meet mere hours after the conclusion of the battle.

* * *

_**Fruition of Erised**_

"Harry,"

It was such a small, quiet noise that the saviour of the wizarding world almost missed it. Even so, people were saying his name all over the castle, it was probably nothing. He went back to attempting to repair the rather scarred statue of 'Reginald the Ratty'.

"_Harry_,"

Harry closed his eyes. He recognised that voice, the beautifully melodic sort of calling that could only belong to one person. One redhead person. But she wasn't speaking to him, so he had another go at attaching Reginald's nose, unsuccessfully.

"_Harry!_" This time he paused for more than a second, and, looking over his shoulder, he spotted that very distinctive blend of autumnal-coloured hair.

"Ginny," he said, his voice coming out a little colder than he meant it to, "what can I do for you?"

The girl blinked at him, before a scowl crossed her face. "I thought you might want to talk," she said quietly, "but if you're too busy..." Harry was quite alert enough to spot the dangerous tone in the words.

"No," he said immediately, "No, I've got time." Wryly, he couldn't help but think that out of all the souls in the world, he possibly had the _most_ time on his hands. He quickly looked around the corridor, and on spotting a group of Ravenclaw sixth years coming towards them he inclined his head towards a nearby classroom door. "In here."

Ginny was apparently just as keen for this conversation not to be in the public eye, and she followed Harry through the door without hesitation. On the other side of the door, however, they found the room in less than perfect condition; half the floor was missing, and there was a rather large hole where the outside wall used to be. Still, at least the room now provided spectacular views over the lake.

"You've been avoiding me." Harry said, his eyes fixed on the churning inky lake waters, watching as the Giant Squid helped Professors fish out bodies from the water. Ginny didn't immediately acknowledge Harry's words, herself mesmerised by the Squid's morbid work.

"I've been angry with you."

Harry felt his eyebrows rising, and sneaked a look at the girl by his side. Her cheeks were flushed and her hair was blowing softly in the wind, but her eyes were where his eyes settled, to the fire behind them.

"I defeat the most dangerous man since Grindewald," Harry paused, thanking the gods that Dumbledore had come to his senses before following his friend down that route, "and you're _angry_ with me?"

Harry continued to stare at Ginny for some time, before giving up on an answer and averting his eyes back to the growing pile of bodies on the shore of the lake. The pair watched silently as one of the Professors, Flitwick by the stature of him, separated the dead into two very separate piles, one carefully laid, the other rather haphazardly stacked.

"I'm happy that you got the bastard, of course I am." Ginny eventually said, "Today he's taken more from me than I thought possible. Half my year are... gone, and most of my friends in the other years too." Fred's omission from that list was almost tangible. "I'm glad Tom's dead, along with all of his cronies."

The use of Riddle's name struck Harry for a second, before he remembered the events of Ginny's first year. This battle had been just as personal for her as it had been for him, in a way.

"Then why..." Harry started, but Ginny cut across him, turning to look at him with those blazing eyes that seemed to freeze him in place.

"I had as much right to fight today as any of you!" she growled, her eyes narrowing as she reiterated Harry's thoughts, "I thought _you_ of all people would understand that, Harry."

It was a few moments before Harry felt he had permission to breathe, let alone formulate some kind of response. Luckily, Ginny wasn't waiting for one as she looked back out of the impromptu window towards the lake. After a few moments she continued talking, this time in a much calmer manner.

"But you just left me with orders to '_keep hidden, keep safe_'." She snorted, the noise almost sounding like a laugh, "You didn't want me to fight, you just wanted me out of the way, like some china doll that you didn't want to get cracked."

"I don't think you're a china doll, Ginny..." Harry began, but as before, Ginny cut across his words.

"But you insist on treating me like one!" she said sternly. "I expect that from my mother, my brothers even, but not from you, Harry. Not from you."

Harry turned back to the scene outside, and watched as the worthy dead were levitated back into the castle in a line, like some sickly procession of death. Those that had strived to take these lives in the first place were left in their untidy pile. It was a stark reminder of the differences of the two sides. One looked after it's fallen, whilst the other ran as far in the other direction, leaving the dead rotting where they fell.

"I just didn't want to find you lying face down in some corridor." Harry said softly after a short while, "You mean the world to me, Ginny, and I don't think I could take it if you were killed, not when there was a chance that keeping you in that room would have saved you."

He couldn't see it, he was currently staring at where Hagrid and Gwarp were helping to put back together one of the greenhouses like some giant three-dimensional jigsaw, but rather he felt it when Ginny's mood slipped into a darker state.

"Fred meant the world to me," she said quietly, but Harry could hear the strain in her voice, "but that doesn't mean that I'm not proud he was fighting." She paused and Harry managed to steal another look. Ginny's eyes were starting to look a little bloodshot, and Harry could tell that she was holding back tears, not that she'd shed them, not when she saw it as a sign of weakness. "No one thought to protect him by locking him in a room because they knew that he'd want to fight. That he'd willingly give his life for his family, for the cause... for _you_."

Ginny, it seemed, had finally caved in, as her voice had cracked on that last word. Sneaking another look, he found her staring at him, a solitary tear making it's way over a flushed cheek. "Why is it so hard to accept that I might feel the same way?"

Harry sighed as he turned his profile to her. Running through his head were one hundred and one reasons why she should be kept away from the fighting, but he didn't utter a single one. Instead, he did the only thing that seemed natural to him.

"Come here." he said softly, opening his arms out to her. Ginny didn't even hesitate as she closed the distance between the two, burrowing her head in his shoulder just as the tears really started to fall. She was crying, Harry knew somehow, for all her lost friends, for Remus and Tonks who meant so much to so many, for little Teddy who was now an orphan, for Lavender Brown who was now inflicted with Lycanthropy, for Dumbledore who would never know that his schemes would succeed, for Sirius whom had been so cruelly given a second chance at life only for it to be snatched away, for George who would have to live the rest of his life alone, for Fred who would never joke again, for her mother who would bear the loss the hardest, and possibly last of all, for her brother, Hermione and Harry who had been through so much to bring us this peace that had cost so many lives.

Harry felt he should really say something to her, something soothing that would put her mind to rest, but nothing seemed to spring to mind, so he settled for simply wrapping his arms around the shaking girl, trying to pass over some strength to her through shear willpower alone.

After a few minutes, Ginny's sobs subsided enough for her to control her shaking, and she turned her head against Harry's chest so she could look out across the grounds once more. Harry could only stand and watch as she closed her eyes, apparently drawing strength from his heartbeat as it thumped inside his body. Despite the situation, it was a pleasant feeling for Harry to realise that he could help someone simply by 'being'.

"I heard what happened," Ginny said suddenly, her soft voice breaking into Harry's peasant thoughts, "In the forest I mean. Hagrid's been telling everyone he meets about it; the entire school's talking about it."

Harry frowned. He'd have to have a word with Hagrid about that. People around Hogwarts already seemed to worship the ground he walked on, and Harry really didn't fancy that happening everywhere he went, and especially not in public.

"What's he been saying?" Harry asked, slightly dreading the answer.

Ginny paused, apparently thinking of a good way to put whatever it was into words. "He says that you 'died for us', or perhaps it was that you 'would have died for us', he wasn't exactly very clear on the matter, kept contradicting himself, but one thing that he was sure about was that you survived the killing curse, again."

Ginny looked up to Harry's face, and Harry couldn't help but look directly back down at her's, his answer seeming to get lost in the deep brown pools of molten chocolate that Ginny called eyes.

"Did you really go out to surrender?" she whispered, although Harry heard every word. Harry smiled a sad smile back down at her and shook his head.

"No," he said simply, the words '_I went to die_' running rapidly and guiltily through his head, "It was something that I had to do, I had to stand up to him, one-on-one." he sighed, trying to work out a way of explaining why he needed to kill himself to someone who didn't know about the Horcruxes.

"Three years ago, at the end of the Triwizard Tournament, Riddle used my blood to resurrect his body. By doing so, he gained the protection that my mother had placed over me, over my blood. A protective barrier so strong, that it had shielded me from the killing curse as a baby, and now Riddle had that very same shielding.

"I had to remove my mother's protection from him before there was any chance of killing him," he said, settling on a half-truth. "When he fired the killing curse at me, it hit my mother's magical barrier, shattering it and leaving me, but more crucially, _him_ without any defence other than that of his own skill.

"From that moment on, Riddle was as mortal as any of us." Harry decided to leave out the fact that in willingly giving his life, he'd placed a similar protection over the entire school. That was another conversation, for another time. "From that moment on, anyone could have killed him, and your chances of winning the battle were greatly improved."

Ginny's eyes narrowed at that comment, her body going stiff in his arms as she seemed to figure something out.

"_Our_ chances?" she said quietly, "You didn't think that you'd survive." her eyes were now wide open, "You went out there to die!"

Harry scoffed, "I went out there to give you a chance at defeating Riddle. With the protection he had over him, it would have been impossible to kill him without him killing me first. _'Neither can live, while the other survives'_," he recited, forgetting that Ginny hadn't heard the prophecy. "It was your only hope."

Ginny looked up at him with an unreadable expression. "See," she said eventually, apparently content to ignore Harry's outburst for now, "even you were allowed to willingly give your life, why wasn't I?"

Harry sighed, "I've already told you. I'd die if anything happened to you, I'd never forgive myself."

"And what about how I'd feel if you'd succeeded in killing yourself so _selflessly_?" Ginny retorted, tears back in her eyes, "How do you think I'd ever be able to forgive myself if I was shut up in a room, safe, whilst you were out there dying for _me_?" She thumped a hand against Harry's chest in anger, but didn't move to pull away, which Harry found himself eternally grateful for. "Dammit, Harry. We love you more than you could possibly imagine," she locked her brown eyes on his brilliant green, "_I_ love you, Harry, and that means I want to be fighting alongside you, not shut away in some tower."

Harry remained stunned for a number of moments. In his entire life, he could count the times he'd been told he was loved on one hand. He'd known it, unconsciously, that the entire Weasley clan had accepted him into their family, and all that that entailed. He'd even been told once, but it was somewhat different to hear Ginny say it.

She loved him.

Despite himself, despite the mass of death and destruction that surrounded them, Harry felt a small smile creep into his features.

Looking back, Harry could never remember what exactly had happened next, how their lips had met, or how long exactly they had remained in that room, but non-the-less, it remained one of his happiest memories until the day he died, some one hundred years later, with his family surrounding him.

His last thought as he looked about the faces of his children, his grandchildren and their offspring in turn, was that if he were to look into the mirror of Erised, he'd only see his reflection smiling back at him.


End file.
